‘Handsome Dick’ Manitoba Once Peed on the Subway Platform

Name: Richard “Handsome Dick” ManitobaAge: 60Neighborhood: East VillageOccupation: Punk front man, the Dictators NYC; Radio DJ, “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” onSirius XM; Owner, Manitoba’s bar. You can catch him on Thursday, December 18 at the 92Y for “From Genesis to Kings: Jewish Punk and Its Aftermath.”

Who’s your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional? I can probably give you a different answer every day, but I like to go with my first impulse, which is Jack Kirby from Marvel Comics. When I was a kid, I was a Marvel fanatic, and I used to love two artists: Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Ditko I liked a drop more artistically, but I went with Kirby because he’s from the Lower East Side and he was Jewish. And I’m Jewish. And I connect with New YorkJews.

In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job? Entertain the national and international masses, via live performances, and on theradio.

What was your first job in New York? Somebody offered me a job handing out abortion pamphlets on 72nd and Broadway for a clinic around the corner, soon after Roe v. Wade was passed. I hate to sound like an old man, but it was good money! It was like $4 or $5 an hour. I remember one woman walking by — it’s hard to remember, it was so long ago — but she walked by and said, “Give that to your sister!” She was pissed off! She should have been happy that people weren’t going into the dungeons to getabortions.

What’s the last thing you saw on Broadway? Matilda, with my son Jake, and Drew Carey. (He does a monthly program in the UndergroundGarage.)

Do you give money to panhandlers? Only if they look realdestitute.

What’s your drink? Diet Coke with lime, or seltzer. I’ve been sober since 1983. I opened Manitoba’s 15 years ago; If I’d opened the bar in 1981, it would have closed the dayafter.

How often do you prepare your own meals? Much of the time. I love to cook, and I’m damn good at it. I find it relaxing and it’s a gift to give to people — like when I perform and people have a good time. It’s the same kind ofthing.

What’s your favorite medication? Food.

What is the best thing in or about your apartment? Giant couch with 53-inch television in the living room, and 42-inch television in the bedroom. It’s a great two-bedroom apartment with a terrace that I waited nine years for. Mitchell Lama. Hit the apartmentlotto!

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen on the subway? The time I peed on a platform as a drunk teenager, got caught, and received afine.

When was the last time you stayed out past 3 a.m.? A month ago. That’s rare. We have a kid, and babysitters are expensive. I always say it’s $80 before we hit thestreet.

Which do you prefer, the old Times Square or the new Times Square? Old! It was bad and thrilling and exciting and dark, but it was like wow, look at all the characters. And I was a teenage kid looking at naked movie after naked movie. And you know what’s happened to New York now? It’s turned into America. Mom and Pop can’t afford the rent anymore; the only ones who can are national places. I have a goddamn Blimpie’s down the block. I told my son, you are not allowed to eat at Blimpie’s, unless you’re 100 miles outside of New York. Because there’s Russo’s on 11th street, where I’ve been going to for 30 years. They make fresh mozzarella in the basement! Go get an Italian hero over there. Don’t go toBlimpie’s.

What do you think of Mayor de Blasio? De Blasio at times I like, at times rubs me the wrong way. I hate the way cops’ hands are tied in the city these days. That’s part of his trip, I believe. I loved Koch. Introduced my son to him as, “The Mayor, the last time New York wasfun!”

What do you hate most about living in New York? So little space, and the way people bang into you because of the lack of space. Walking four wide across the sidewalk, I got no room! Okay, I’ll go into thegutter.

If you could banish one person from New York forever, who would it be? David Johansen.

When’s the last time you drove a car? On vacation in Puerto Rico with my wife and son this pastAugust.

Finish this sentence: The NYPD _____. Has always been fair to me. All the cops I know are friendly, honest, and straight-up. Funny, too! Family guys and gals, which I think people sometimes forget. My personal experiences, especially with the 9th Precinct, my neighborhood precinct, aregreat.

Times, Post, or Daily News? Hate to ride the fence, but like a variety of people you can learn from, I get something from all of thosepapers.

Where do you go to be alone? It’s built into my band touring. Always a couple of hours in each city to be alone in my hotel, and walk the streets seeing how the localslive.

What makes someone a New Yorker? Having spent my entire life here, I notice that many people moving here think they have to “act like New Yorkers”: Tough, aggressive, nasty at times. That’s a friggin’ caricature of a New Yorker. New Yorkers I know, are friendly, outgoing, and only guarded when they have to be. They must have played stickball, punchball, off the stoop, had an egg cream with two stick pretzels, and owned Spaldeens and PennsyPinkys.

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THE FEED

9/14/2019

Another potential misdeed

The nation’s top intelligence official is illegally withholding a whistleblower complaint, possibly to protect President Donald Trump or senior White House officials, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff alleged Friday.

Schiff issued a subpoena for the complaint, accusing acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire of taking extraordinary steps to withhold the complaint from Congress, even after the intel community’s inspector general characterized the complaint as credible and of “urgent concern.”

“A Director of National Intelligence has never prevented a properly submitted whistleblower complaint that the [inspector general] determined to be credible and urgent from being provided to the congressional intelligence committees. Never,” Schiff said in a statement. “This raises serious concerns about whether White House, Department of Justice or other executive branch officials are trying to prevent a legitimate whistleblower complaint from reaching its intended recipient, the Congress, in order to cover up serious misconduct.”

Schiff indicated that he learned the matter involved “potentially privileged communications by persons outside the Intelligence Community,” raising the specter that it is “being withheld to protect the President or other Administration officials.”

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group on Saturday attacked two plants at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, including the world’s biggest petroleum processing facility, in a strike that three sources said had disrupted output and exports.

Two sources close to the matter said 5 million barrels per day of crude production had been impacted — close to half of the kingdom’s output or 5% of global oil supply.

The pre-dawn drone attack on the Saudi Aramco facilities set off several fires, although the kingdom, the world’s largest oil exporter, later said these were brought under control.

Candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination are sprinting from coast to coast in search of campaign donations over the next 18 days, moving urgently to stockpile cash for their big fall push — and to avoid a death spiral that a weak third-quarter fundraising tally might prompt. …

Still, Democratic donors have expressed nervousness in recent weeks that some presidential hopefuls could post disappointing totals, compounding the candidates’ broader struggles. July and August tend to be slow for fundraising, with many people on vacation and tuned out of politics. The large and unpredictably fluid field also has made it difficult for donors to commit to a candidate.

“The third quarter number, from a finance standpoint, will define the narrative throughout the course of the fall, when these questions about viability for so many of the candidates are so real, especially in the second and third tiers,” said Rufus Gifford, the finance director for Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaignand a donor to at least three candidates so far this year.

While MIT engages in damage control following revelations the university’s Media Lab accepted millions of dollars in funding from Jeffrey Epstein, a renowned computer scientist at the university has fanned the flames by apparently going out of his way to defend the accused sex trafficker—and child pornography in general.

Richard Stallman has been hailed as one of the most influential computer scientists around today and honored with a slew of awards and honorary doctorates, but his eminence in the academic computer science community came into question Friday afternoon when purportedly leaked email excerpts showed him suggesting one of Epstein’s alleged victims was “entirely willing.”

An MIT engineering alumna, Selam Jie Gano, published a blog post calling for Stallman’s removal from the university in light of his comments, along with excerpts from the email in which Stallman appeared to defend both Epstein and Marvin Minsky, a lauded cognitive scientist and founder of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab who was accused of assaulting Virginia Giuffre.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the young liberal icon from New York, has endorsed Senator Ed Markey’s reelection bid next year, as Representative Joe Kennedy III considers challenging Markey for what promises to be the nation’s most competitive congressional primary.

Ocasio-Cortez and Markey have worked together as the primary sponsors of the Green New Deal, the signature legislative issue for both lawmakers.

ABC’s coverage of the 10-candidate forum draws the largest preliminary ratings for any debate so far this cycle.

ABC and Univision scored strong ratings Thursday with their coverage of the third Democratic presidential primary debate.

The debate, featuring 10 candidates and current frontrunners Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren sharing the stage for the first time, drew a 10.0 household rating in Nielsen’s 56 metered markets. That’s 23 percent higher than the 8.1 NBC got for part two of the first debate on June 27, but about 25 percent lower than combined metered-market average for NBC and MSNBC. That telecast ended up with 18.1 million viewers across NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo.

Beginning speech to Concerned Women of America, @SecPompeo says “this is such a beautiful hotel. The guy who owns it must gonna be successful along the way,” he says, without mentioning @realDonaldTrump by name. “That was for the Washington Post,” he says of his remark. pic.twitter.com/vPYp9vYE9y

Child care, a key issue for many Americans, is getting little attention at the debates

Millions of Americans struggle to find decent, affordable child care every year. But when Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tried to bring up the subject during Thursday’s Democratic debate, in response to a question about education, a moderator cut her off.

“Start with our babies by providing universal child care for every baby age 0 to 5, universal pre-K for every 3-year-old and 4-year-old in this country,” Warren said, just getting on a roll when ABC moderator Linsey Davis interrupted. “Thank you, senator,” Davis said.

Davis was just following the rules: Warren’s time for the response had lapsed. But the moment was a perfect metaphor for the attention child care and other work-family issues have gotten in these debates ― or, more accurately, the attention they have not gotten in these debates.

After the debate, Castro is being criticized for his kamikaze attack on Biden, while journalists are toiling away trying to transcribe Biden’s “record player” response

Biden was asked whether he still held these attitudes: “What responsibility do you think that Americans need to take to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?” What follows is a transcript of his rambling answer (I have omitted nothing), which for some reason includes references to record players and Venezuela:

Well, they have to deal with the — look, there’s institutional segregation in this country. From the time I got involved, I started dealing with that. Redlining banks, making sure we are in a position where — look, you talk about education. I propose is we take the very poor schools, triple the amount of money we spend from $15 to $45 billion a year. Give every single teacher a raise to the $60,000 level.

Number two, make sure that we bring in to help the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home, we have one school psychologist for every 1,500 kids in America today. It’s crazy. The teachers are — I’m married to a teacher, my deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them. Make sure that every single child does, in fact, have 3, 4 and 5-year-olds go to school. Not day care, school.

Social workers help parents deal with how to raise their children. It’s not that they don’t want to help, they don’t know what to play the radio, make sure the television — excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the — make sure that kids hear words, a kid coming from a very poor school — a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time we get there.